Green Digital Health Tool

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How to use this site

This tool shows you the questions that will need to be answered to implement and maintain a sustainable Digital Health System. You probably won't be able to answer all the questions by yourself, so identify the people that have the knowledge and skills on the different areas covered by this tool and ask them the questions. They might be people in other departments or even some of the suppliers used by your organisation.

Beside the questions you will sometimes see an icon. Clicking on them will provide extra information. Below is a brief explanation of what each icon means:

Why should you ask this questionWhy should you ask this question?


Extra information and resourcesRead more about this subject


ideas that you could trySuggest actions to be taken next

Hosting on local servers

Why should you ask this question The questions assume you have an existing server room, cooled by an air conditioning system, and would be enhancing this to host the new digital health system. However, they are also relevant if you are setting up a server room from scratch to host your digital health system. Read more about Server room sustainability.

Although designed primarily for technicians in the data centre industry, you may also find the Compass tool helpful - it gives guidance on choosing options for procurement, refurbishment and disposal of servers that are best aligned with the circular economy.

If your “local server” is actually housed in a large scale data centre it would be worth considering the questions in the “cloud” option as well, even if the data centre only serves your organisation so you are not going through a “hosting provider”.

ideas that you could try Ask your IT team the following questions and assess their answers, using the explanatory information provided against each question, to determine whether you want to seek improvements to the environmental sustainability of your local server option.
ideas that you could try You may want to consider swapping your energy supplier for one that makes more use of renewable energy.

Why should you ask this question Be aware a new UPS will come with a substantial embodied carbon footprint. You should avoid upgrading until your current system is at end of life.

ideas that you could try Bio fuels and natural gas are better than diesel from an environmental perspective, and Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) may also be a good alternative. Also consider the transport emissions associated with your choice of fuel.

ideas that you could try Monitor the temperature of your server room environment. Overcooling is common in server rooms and temperatures can often be raised without any adverse effects.

Aim to maximise the energy efficiency of the AC system. Considerable improvements have been made to the energy efficiency of AC systems in recent years, but be aware that these energy efficiency gains are likely to be dwarfed by the carbon footprint from the production of a new system, so don't be tempted to replace your existing system without actually assessing its efficiency - or its proximity to end of life - first.

Consider the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the coolant used by your AC system. If this is high, find out if your system will run on a lower GWP coolant. (Note that if you are using an HFC coolant you should look to replace it as soon as possible, even if this does mean bringing forward the replacement of your whole AC system).

Why should you ask this question This will maximise energy efficiency.
ideas that you could try If your server room contains multiple server racks, consider “in row” cooling, where your air conditioning units are positioned as close as possible to the server cabinets to increase their energy efficiency.

Why should you ask this question PUE and CUE are common metrics and measure Power and Carbon Usage Efficiency, respectively.

A PUE of 1 is ideal as it would indicate that all the power supplied to a server room was used for the computing equipment - so no energy was necessary for things like lighting or cooling.

A CUE of 0 is ideal as it would indicate that the server room operated entirely on carbon free energy sources.